I still cannot understand why Daiichi-Sankyo paid nearly $4 billion to acquire this piece of corporate garbage. Did they not investigate their acquisition target? Were they foolish, ignorant, under duress or worse, did they just accept it as something that happened all the time ?

Indian corporates seem to have a penchant for being in the news for all the wrong reasons.. First the Kingfisher saga and now this. There have also been other instances like the Satyam case. Unfortunately, many of the perpetrators have gone scot free. Doesn't do much good to India's reputation abroad.

Never argue with idiots. They will bring you down to their level, and beat you with experience.

I'm not happy that this happened, but I'm glad the story is out there.

I looked at the PDF of drugs Ranbaxy distributes in the US. I take one of them. It's the only drug in recent times which I had to have double the usual dose to be effective. My doctor was reluctant to prescribe it that high, but he did eventually. I just looked at the bottle and it's labeled "RANBA" where the manufacturer goes, which I'm sure stands for Ranbaxy.

From now on, I'm just going to refuse any generic made by Ranbaxy, and tell them why at the pharmacy.

There's a line in that article that says that the execs at Ranbaxy looked at the regulations as an obstacle to be gamed. I think that sums it up perfectly. Practically every company in India tends to do that domestically. This is quite often a result of archaic or inadequate legal/regulatory frameworks in the country regardless of industry and that tends to be 'business-unfriendly', and this is in addition to a broken political system which is also there to be gamed. When these companies go international they take these attitudes with them. Ranbaxy is just learning the lesson, but not quite the hard way perhaps given how it's been performing regardless of the scandals. "We don't know why we're still in business" - line from the article.

Quoting sturmovik (Reply 4):There's a line in that article that says that the execs at Ranbaxy looked at the regulations as an obstacle to be gamed. I think that sums it up perfectly. Practically every company in India tends to do that domestically.

That was an especially interesting perspective to read and understand. A friend of mine who does business in India has always written off 'the Indian way' in business as simply 'wanting the moon for the price of a mango'. But consciously gaming the system as a matter of course is a horse of a different color, explaining why bribery and general corruption is still sadly an accepted way of doing business in the sub-continent.

I read the article a few days ago and was disgusted and ashamed. I was also horrified that the execs were not jailed for life - a financial penalty is hardly anything when it's the "company's money", as opposed to your money or your freedom (from jail). Most importantly, I was curious to know why the FDA did not immediately ban all Ranbaxy drugs in entirety?

Well written article though - great piece of investigative journalism.

Quoting Nimish (Reply 6):I was curious to know why the FDA did not immediately ban all Ranbaxy drugs in entirety?

You'd have to look at the importance of their medications in the supply chain, and if Ranbaxy had cornered the market in any of the generics. That's one possibility (though I don't know if it applied in this case).

15 years ago or so when all of the thyroid drugs had to go through the approval process, that was one of the concerns, since Synthroid was (at the time) the most prescribed drug in the U.S. Thyroid medications had been grandfathered in to the regulations, and had never been FDA approved. Removing Synthroid from the marketplace would have caused a serious shortfall in supply of thyroid meds IIRC, so it was allowed to be manufactured for a period of time, even though the finished product could be 20-30% high-to-low in its effective ingredient batch-to-batch, amazing as that was.